Primitive Bodily Communications in Psychotherapy

Embodied Expressions of a Disembodied Psyche

Raffaella Hilty
Confer Books
224 pages
ISBN: 9781913494308
May 2022

This book explores how the ‘talking cure’ can still work when words fail and the body ‘talks.’ Non-verbal communication can be thought of as a form of body language and, even though this is a topic not frequently discussed, many practitioners have experienced working with people who communicate through the use of their bodies. The book does not refer to bodily communications as primitive because we see them as inferior to verbal language, but simply because they point to the beginnings of psychological development, to primary ways of being and relating, as well as to enduring aspects of ourselves.